Now thats what I call snow !

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Doug
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Hi all , not posted for ages as I've hardly used my camera over lockdown. But I did manage to purchase an Epson V600 scanner and have been going through my late parents boxes of photographs that they left me. I thought I'd share these few photos taken in Watford, during I believe the 1963 winter. Just think these days the country grinds to a halt with a sprinkling of snow, not like the amount on my fathers car.

img791 by Doug, on Flickr

img786 by Doug, on Flickr

img785 by Doug, on Flickr

img784 by Doug, on Flickr

I think the car is a Vauxhall, but I'm willing to be corrected and if anyone knows Watford, this is Fourth Avenue Garston with Lea Farm School at the end of the road. I have some more photos that may be of interest, so I will post them shortly

I'm not after critique but please feel free to comment.

Enjoy

Doug
 
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Wow ! love the pictures, love the car.
 
Nice. I remember that winter well. When I woke up on the first morning and looked out the window, the snow was right up to the sill.
There was no school because we couldn't get out of our houses without a shovel. :banana:

The week that followed saw us building the biggest snowmen, igloos and a whole host of 'hidey holes'. :)
 
I wasn't born until 1964 so obviously I don't remember the 63 winter, just my parents telling me about it. Nowadays it's national news when we get a couple of inches, and without wanting to sound like my dad, but "we don't get winters like we used too" !
 
I remember that winter although I was very young. My family moved house in the middle of it. I recall my Mum and I went ahead of my Dad and little brother (who was no more than a baby) and we had no heating as the house we moved into had no coal in the coal cellar. We tramped through the deep snow looking for a shop that was open and had some paraffin for the portable heater that we had and my welly boots had a hole in them. My toes were frozen!

The snow lasted for weeks and weeks and there was flooding when it all eventually thawed.
 
I remember it well, didn't get above freezing for months, you could walk across the creek at Fareham on the ice floes, I'd never seen the sea freeze before, and yes we just don't get the winters that we used to, it was rare to have a year without some snow, but don't see it very often now on the South coast. Also 1947 was a bad one I can't say that I remember that one but there are family photos of me in the snow as a toddler

I agree though, get a light dusting these days and it's major incident!
Here's one from the family archive, looks like it had started to thaw when this was taken.
IMG_FA1452.JPG
 
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Amazing images Doug and wonderful memories for you. Thanks for sharing (y)
 
Thanks Doug, love the images!
 
These pictures brings back memories, started snowing on Boxing Day, the flakes seemed as big as your hands. what started as a long weekend xmas visit to my aunts ended up as a
very long adventure, stuck on Isle of Sheppey for weeks. Sadly I have not got any photos of it.
 
Some great old photos. I do like seeing older scenes such as these. (y):giggle:(y)
 
Just looked it up, and I got this from Wikipedia.

" The winter of 1962–63, known as the Big Freeze of 1963, was one of the coldest winters on record in the United Kingdom. Temperatures plummeted and lakes and rivers began to freeze" ( Source, Wikipedia)
 
My mother had just arrived in Scotland to be married in 1947. She came from sub-tropical Durban (South Africa) and had never seen snow in her life. I expect it came as a bit of a shock...don't think she ever fully recovered from it, and my parents moved back to SA when my father retired in the 70s.

I was 10 in 1963 and I remember that winter, but not all that clearly. I was at prep school and I do recall that we went sledging in the Kings Park (Stirling) because we couldn't play rugby.

Thankfully we don't get much of that sort of winter now. I don't do cold/wet weather very well and the last month has been bad enough!
 
I was a passenger in an unheated Transit van taking a “Georgian day bed” theatrical prop from Southampton to Loughborough. The road was cleared but the snow was piled at the roadside higher than the van over much of the journey. (Not much snow in Southampton, as usual.) :)
 
I do seem to remember that winters in general were a lot worse then. I seem to recall in the late fifties my Dad opening the front door and the snow was halfway up the frame. I put it down to being small but looking back I just think we had more snow. Here in Cornwall it hardly ever snows and if it does it has usually gone by the end of the next day when the warm rain washes it away -- we get a lot of that, rain. If you stand still long enough you would turn green on your North side when the mosses grow, all our trees are like that.
 
That is an annual occurrence where I live. We have already had 2 days like this in January but fortunately it didn't last, although I had to dig my car out so I could move it up the driveway, and that took me two and a half hours. With the wind it drifted and was was piled up against my back door to a height of 3 feet.

Scotland have been threatened with 30cms this next couple of days, now that IS snow.
 
Just looked it up, and I got this from Wikipedia.

" The winter of 1962–63, known as the Big Freeze of 1963, was one of the coldest winters on record in the United Kingdom. Temperatures plummeted and lakes and rivers began to freeze" ( Source, Wikipedia)

Yes the winter of 62/3 was a baddun. It started to snow on the 2nd November 1962 and we were not clear of it until May 1963. I had just started out as a policeman and dreaded the nightshifts. In those days for really bad weather beat bobbies used to wear thick woolen capes to keep warm and I remember some of the lads returning to the station with the capes frozen into a board.

The winter of 1947 was worse (I just remember it when my dad made me an igloo in the front garden. (as was the one in 1941 but that was before my time.) To make things worse there was a coal shortage as well, being so close to the end of the war what was brought out of the ground went direct to industry and the power stations, domestic use was at the bottom of the list..

Even in 2012 the outside thermometer on the side of my house registered -12c at height of the cold nights. Well I do live 800 feet up above sea level.
 
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Yes the winter of 62/3 was a baddun. It started to snow on the 2nd November 1962 and we were not clear of it until May 1963. I had just started out as a policeman and dreaded the nightshifts. In those days for really bad weather beat bobbies used to wear thick woolen capes to keep warm and I remember some of the lads returning to the station with the capes frozen into a board.

The winter of 1947 was worse (I just remember it when my dad made me an igloo in the front garden. (as was the one in 1941 but that was before my time.) To make things worse there was a coal shortage as well, being so close to the end of the war what was brought out of the ground went direct to industry and the power stations, domestic use was at the bottom of the list..

Even in 2012 the outside thermometer on the side of my house registered -12c at height of the cold nights. Well I do live 800 feet up above sea level.

Winter of 1947 was great! I remember making “forts” with giant (by our height) snowballs — rolled until they got big - and the snowball fights from them, at my primary school.
 
Winters were certainly worse according to ,my late parents. My father was home on leave from the army in 1947. He lived in a small town in SW Scotland which was cut off by snow. An appeal went out for men to help dig the railway out, so food could get in.dad was helping cut steps in the snowdrifts and got warm, so took his army battledress jacket off and hung it on top of a telegraph pole, luckily someone pointed it out to him before he left it there!
In the winter of 1963 as an 18 month old we were living in the North East, my mum parked my pram facing into the wind - apparently she did keep going out and sweeping the snow off the pram cover every time it got so deep it was nearly filling the cover!
 
Winters were certainly worse according to ,my late parents. My father was home on leave from the army in 1947. He lived in a small town in SW Scotland which was cut off by snow. An appeal went out for men to help dig the railway out, so food could get in.dad was helping cut steps in the snowdrifts and got warm, so took his army battledress jacket off and hung it on top of a telegraph pole, luckily someone pointed it out to him before he left it there!
In the winter of 1963 as an 18 month old we were living in the North East, my mum parked my pram facing into the wind - apparently she did keep going out and sweeping the snow off the pram cover every time it got so deep it was nearly filling the cover!

You were lucky, my mother used to put me out in the snow in my cardboard box ...

View: https://youtu.be/VKHFZBUTA4k
 
I do seem to remember that winters in general were a lot worse then. I seem to recall in the late fifties my Dad opening the front door and the snow was halfway up the frame. I put it down to being small but looking back I just think we had more snow. Here in Cornwall it hardly ever snows and if it does it has usually gone by the end of the next day when the warm rain washes it away -- we get a lot of that, rain. If you stand still long enough you would turn green on your North side when the mosses grow, all our trees are like that.

I'm a native Cornishman. When I was very young I heard it said that it was possible to tell if someone was native Cornish because they all had webbed feet. I checked and when I found I didn't I was most upset, apparently it took my parents quite a lot of time to get me to accept it was a joke. :)
 
Where I live is 800 feet above sea level on the edge of the north Pennines in Durham and when it snows we can be among the worst hit. The usual accompanying winds make it drift and the roads don't usually suffer too badly. This last lot came down to about 7 inches deep and there was no wind so where it fell, it stayed. Yesterday we had quite a strong NE wind and the powdered snow had blown off the fields and onto the road downhill The plough had been through and cleared the snow off the road surface but it was like driving though a snow canyon with snow piled around 5 feet high on the south side of the road. It was actually quite dramatic to look at. (but didn't have my camera!)
 
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Is it a joke?;)

Yes, but the rain in Cornwall isn't, especially when it has a good gale behind it. Another old saying in the west was "The rain comes out of the cloud over Penzance and hits the ground in Truro.
 
Where I live is 800 feet above sea level on the edge of the north Pennines in Durham and when it snows we can be among the worst hit. The usual accompanying winds make it drift and the roads don't usually suffer too badly. This last lot came down to about 7 inches deep and there was no wind so where it fell, it stayed. Yesterday we had quite a strong NE wind and the powdered snow had blown off the fields and onto the road downhill The plough had been through and cleared the snow off the road surface but it was like driving though a snow canyon with snow piled around 5 feet high on the south side of the road. It was actually quite dramatic to look at. (but didn't have my camera!)
Like that a lot round here on North York Moors.
Yesterday and overnight the wind touched 70mph at -3 and pre-existing 3-4" was almost all blown into drifts several feet deep, leaving fields bare.
 
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